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[Exalted] Any Solar Exalted fans still around?

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Registered User

One of the best things about 3E is that it's really given Solars a lot of flavor in terms of powers. "I'm the best at crafting/dodging/swording/whatever" can get kind of boring, but now Solars have Doombot powers, awesome Lore Charms that lead into the hotness that is the GKS Charm, "I step into your shadow and take control of you" Stealth stuff...they got more than their fair share of wackiness, and I'm here for it.

Registered User

Yeah, just to let all Solar fans know:
The ask the devs thread has just answered that their current thinking is that Solars won't be able to apply their Supernal to Sidereal Martial Arts. They are treated the same as Sorcery in that regard.

so yeah. guess they really want the most powerful of sorcery and Sidereal Martial Arts to be something that Solars EARN even if they can do them. guess Supernal Sorcery was just never meant to be.

oh well. I think says a lot about Solar design this edition: while individual Solars are specialists, the entire charmset and capabilities of them are generally useful while other Exalts in general are more specialized when taken all together. they're powerful enough to to anything, but not powerful enough to make anyone else irrelevant. its great. while they are more excellent and powerful at what they do, they can't take shortcuts doing it, Supernal is just their natural talent shining through.

the more I learn, the more I get a better feel for how its supposed to be designed. and how Solars are good when they're not being screwed up by 2e.

Dweller on the Threshold

I’ve always liked them and always supported their status as the default character type. I’m fairly new to 3rd edition, but that doesn’t seem to have changed.

I like all the classic Chosen, for what it’s worth (don’t know about the new types yet), and I don’t really do favorites, but I’ve always been mystified by the claim that Solars are boring. To me they’re anything but.

Registered User

Alchemicals are kinda like android superheroes for me and will always be first, followed by Solars second as the real heroes of the setting. Am hopefull for Gentimians and the next types of exalted but that is all in the future..

From what I've seen on other threads, I think it's just that some people find them a bit boring... generic shiny heroes, compared to the richer themes of the other Exalted... shapeshifting beasts, reality-warping martial artists, cyborgs, etc. As I recall, this view was particularly common among Infernals fans, who saw that part of the setting as a fun trans-humanist playground... by contrast, Solars represented a certain conservatism, looking backward to a past golden age even as they upset the current order.

There was a survey put out in 2016 (early 3e days) by a poster on Onyx Path Forums and here, and put about there and other popular Exalted forums. Hit n=326 participents.

The poster put out their survey data, and included a ranked preference for Exalted types, so I extracted fave splat from 1st in ranked preference, question n=316 respondents answered. Easier to interpret than rpg.net polls where you've obviously got people putting down more than one splat as preferred.

Bigger n venues >40 respondents (reddit, OP, rpg.net) were internally more or less like that. Sample should be independent through different venues, not people answering twice from multiple venues. Extracting any single community had like a 1-2% effect on each category at most.

Solars win as most popular single splat among fans, but also less popular than all other splats put together (didn't hit 50% at ranked 1st), which kind of seems to ring true. They're the least niche and most broad appeal, so should really be expected to come first, but what's the odds they're going to appeal more broadly than all 6 other types put together? Seems like those types would have to be much more niche than they are for that to be likely.

This just tells us about online community tho. Player base is probably more Solar because they're historically best supported and in core, so to like another type you have to go through the threshold of looking at core deciding "OK, I wasn't into them, but I'll still invested in looking at these other guys", and even then probably won't be that invested unless you can find a group of others who are and willing to deal with lower game mechanical support. Then this compounds with being a bit niche in the first place.

edit: Comparing the correlation with average ranking from favourite to least (1-7), there was a good correlation, so splats with more faves tended to be well ranked generally (partly this is circular), though Dragonblooded were a little better ranked on average compared to number of favourites, and Infernals and Solars a little lower ranked on average compared to they expectation based on how many faves they got (e.g. Infernals and Solars both a little more Marmite-y).

Disturbingly NEET-Like

Definitely a Solar fan here (though the Thousand Streams River in 2e also sold me on Lunars). These days, though, I prefer my own version of the setting to the official one ("I reject your canon and substitute my own!"), and the wonky mechanics of Ex3 have managed to unsell me on Storyteller in general.

Which leads me to the philosophical conundrum: if you've changed the setting of a game, and you're not using the original rules, are you still playing the same game?